Consoles: Back To Basics Please

[Calite]

Consoles have been gaining more and more features recently, and many of them are nice features, however they don't need the features. For most things, such as web browsing, music playing, we have devices that can do those but better.

Think about it, the more features they add, the less they will focus on the actual gaming power and stability of the system(RROD anyone?).

In fact, if we keep adding more and more features, we will end up with basically PCs, which are only good for video games if you have a lot of money or a custom machine.

I think consoles need to go back to basics, but provide some features that are nice and we don't all have things that already do it. They should focus on graphics and power, and hard drive space. Additional features they should have and focus on would be Voice and Text Chatting, communities, DVD and HDDVD or BluRay(Whichever wins, I don't really care), and Smooth, sleek interface.

Who agrees?

 

[Easykill]

Not me. It'll be a couple console generations before there'll be no point in advancing unless we figure out how to make good virtual reality or something. Don't worry, computers wont be surpassed, improvements for pcs are even fster than for a console.

 

[EvilEngineNumberNine]

Consoles have been gaining more and more features recently, and many of them are nice features, however they don't need the features. For most things, such as web browsing, music playing, we have devices that can do those but better.

Think about it, the more features they add, the less they will focus on the actual gaming power and stability of the system(RROD anyone?).

In fact, if we keep adding more and more features, we will end up with basically PCs, which are only good for video games if you have a lot of money or a custom machine.

I think consoles need to go back to basics, but provide some features that are nice and we don't all have things that already do it. They should focus on graphics and power, and hard drive space. Additional features they should have and focus on would be Voice and Text Chatting, communities, DVD and HDDVD or BluRay(Whichever wins, I don't really care), and Smooth, sleek interface.
Who agrees?

Ignorance. As I've already stated in another thread, my friend in Florida took a 35 Dollar used video card to his very old PC and it played Portal just fine. It deosen't take much of a rig to run PC games, just a decent video card. People are flapping on about Cryis and how it takes a God-Machine to run but just about any PC with a 150 Pound 8800GT can run it at highest settings at 1280x1020, which is a better resolution than most console games get.

End Rant

I just want to point out the contradiction here. You say you don't want it to be like a PC but want hardware manufacturers to focus on power, HDD space, and graphics? Sounds like you want a computer instead of a console. Or are you just mad because of all the extra features thay keep putting in consoles like media streaming (which I use all the time) to PS3 and X-Box360? I guess I'm saying I don't agree. If you want your consoles to be cheaper than PCs you're either going to have to wait until the price of the parts for the console are so cheap that the manufacturer will be able to build and sell the console for around the price they are now (except with graphics, power, and HDD space lagging far behind PCs) or sacrifice the power, graphics, and HDD space on something that uses current tech, but bottom bin parts (in which case you'll STILL lag behind the PC scene). I'm fairly certain that consoles are evolving in the direction of PCs and that one day the two will meet and a whole new generation of gaming will be born. I'm not out to disagree with you or anything but look at the trends. Honestly if you don't want your consoles to be like PCs then what you end up with is a Wii. And yeah I love my Wii and it's fun to play but it doesn't really push the envelope in terms of power, graphics, and HDD space now does it?

 

[dan_the_manatee]

RROD is nothing to do with the 360's multimedia facilities; it's simply a design issue, of where the DVD drive, heat sink and GPU are all located. They're all fundamental to the 360 being able to play games, so it would have TRL'd with or without being a media hub. In fact, the 360 has moved away from it's media hub by making the HDD non-standard, something which has baffled me from day 1 of it's release.

I don't have an issue with consoles being living room media centres. Sure, you can have five systems that do it all better, but that's expensive, and BIG. Most people don't want a standard PC tower sitting in their room looking fugly either, so it's either a media centre PC box or a PS3 or 360, and the last two play quite good games.

 

[defcon 1]

If you ask me, allot of the RROD is because people keep putting the system on it's side. A good portion of the ventilation is blocked off and with that kind of hardware, congratulations: you turned a masterpiece of gaming equipment into a furnace. My friend and I just leave it outside while we play DS (it's cold where we live but we're use to it). Later the thing worked like normal. I don't like the idea of the consoles standing up because it's always going to get knocked down. My friend's dog knocked down the 360 and the second time was an accident on our accord. Both times the disk would form a white gouge and he'd have to buy new copies.

About extra features. I use my PS2 and PC as a DVD player because that way I save money (and allot of it). The PS2 still has some of the best games I have ever played. DVD players are a bit obnoxious to use so we just use the Playstation for family movies. I like the XBox's way of playing music while gaming. It's nice because some of the soundtracks on some games get really annoying.